


The Navajo Ring

by Lyras



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyras/pseuds/Lyras
Summary: Ten years after the openings between the worlds were closed, the alethiometer has a message for Lyra. Meanwhile, in the far north, a Texan aeronaut and a shaman-explorer walk into a bar.





	The Navajo Ring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hernameinthesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hernameinthesky/gifts).



Dear hernameinthesky, thank you so much for inviting me to play in this wonderful world again! I really hope you enjoy the result.

 

Oxford was stubbornly resisting the bloom of summer, and the rain rattled around the shutters of the colleges. In Bodley's library, a young woman with gold-blonde hair scribbled notes, frowning at the heavy, clock-like device on the desk beside her. Occasionally she flipped back through her notebook, finger tapping one entry or another. Once she turned to the shelf behind her and extracted a book.

Finally, she swept a lock of hair off her face and sat back, breathing hard.

There might be other interpretations. But Lyra's reading of the alethiometer had long outstripped Dame Hanna's, which meant that in Oxford, and probably in Europe, she was the most qualified person to read it.

Because she'd learned care and caution in the ten years since her instinctive talent for interpreting the alethiometer had vanished, she read back over her notes and asked the question one more time.

There was no mistaking the answer. Nor the way her heart quickened as she thought through the implications.

~~~

Lee ambled into the bar in Novy Odense, Hester a silent shadow at his back. It was the quiet time: low season, late morning, and his gaze went straight to the man in the corner. They exchanged nods, and Lee dredged his pockets, producing enough silver to pay the surly-eyed barman for a chocolatl.

'Well,' he said, sitting down side-on to the bar's sole occupant, 'if I was expecting to see anyone familiar 'round these parts, I guess you would've been high on the list of suspects.'

The man nodded, kept his head inclined. 'Mr Scoresby.'

Lee glanced at Hester, who was loitering by the bar. There was no sign of the man's daemon, but she'd always roamed farther than most. He sipped the chocolatl, felt its sweetness warming his insides.

'Last I saw,' he said, thinking how to frame it, 'we were both of us little more than air and starlight, wrapped around some of them spectres.'

'We took them down, all right,' agreed the man, and sat a little straighter in his chair.

'So what I'm fixing to know,' Lee continued, folding fingers that hadn't existed a little while ago around the cup of chocolatl, 'is exactly what we're doing here and why something or someone saw fit to...to bring us back.'

The man's mouth curled up at the left, not quite a smile. 'You look well, Mr Scoresby.'

Lee tipped his hat in appreciation. 'You too, Shaman.'

He did. The gauntness borne of being cut off from his home world for so long had gone, leaving a hearty man in early middle age. He had the mystique of a shaman, but also the steadiness that must have reassured his academic colleagues on the trip north, twenty and more years ago in another world.

'You know,' Grumman said, 'I never thanked you. For what you did.'

Lee shook his head. 'There was no need to thank me. I'm a professional; I was doing my job.'

Grumman shook his head, too. 'A professional would have left me out there to die. You held off an entire platoon. You let me see my son again...'

'The boy with the knife,' Lee said, and Grumman nodded. 'He seemed like a good kid. Plenty of you in him.'

'And his mother.' Grumman's face was open suddenly, yearning and hollow.

‘You didn’t…’ Lee didn’t know how to phrase it. ‘Me, I remember nothing from that last battle with the spectres to, I’d say about ten minutes ago, walking along the dock. I’m guessing it’s likewise for you?’

Grumman nodded. ‘Have you been here before?’

‘I have. Forty years since – well, it was forty years since when I was alive. You know what date it is? If you don’t mind my saying so, Shaman, you look about fifteen years younger than you did last time I saw you.’

A newspaper landed on the table next to the chocolatl.

‘June twenty-fourth,’ Hester said. They all looked at the year, and Lee sat back against the wooden chair frame.

‘Would you only know it. What kind of a year is this, I wonder?’ He remembered the terrible Norwegian poet who had supported that politician, what was his name, the one who wanted to get rid of the bears from this region. They’d been on the wrong side of history then. Hopefully they still were. He leaned forward, but Hester was already leafing through the paper, angling it so that Grumman could read over her shoulder.

He didn’t quite dare touch her.

~~~

‘It’s the Dust,’ Lyra told Serafina Pekkala. They were in a tent outside Nova Zembla, Pan off talking somewhere with Kaisa. Lyra sometimes thought he enjoyed their visits more than she did. ‘I thought it was just research for my dissertation, you know – but once I’d handed it in, the alethiometer kept on at me.’

It had started to do that again recently, and the experience was so close to her childhood reading of the alethiometer, it made her tremble. She hadn’t just lost the alethiometer around that time – she’d lost Will, and Mr Scoresby, and her parents. And her innocence, of course.

‘What is it telling you?’ asked Serafina.

Lyra frowned. ‘I wish I understood. It just keeps pointing north, right, and then…it shows me Mr Scoresby’s balloon.’ She bit her lip.

Serafina’s voice held no judgement when she asked, ‘Are there other interpretations, as well as a balloon?’

‘Of course. It could be a whale, which can mean all sorts of things that don’t have anything to do with Mr Scoresby. Or it might be a bird – which is why I thought of you. But I’ve been thinking about this for ages. It’s Mr Scoresby.’

‘Mr Scoresby?’ asked Serafina. ‘Or his balloon?’

Lyra pulled out the alethiometer, which she still wore in a shoulder bag close to her heart. ‘I can ask, but it takes me a while to understand the answers these days.’

‘You don’t have to apologise, little sister.’ Serafina stood up. ‘I have watched many people, mostly men, read that instrument, none with such facility as you.’

‘Even now?’ Lyra asked, her fingers poised over the dials.

The witch nodded. ‘Even now.’

‘I’ll ask it,’ Lyra said, and leaned over the table. ‘But Serafina, please tell me. Will you take me north? Because that’s where the alethiometer says we have to go, me and Pan.’

‘I will take you as far as Svalbard,’ said Serafina. ‘After that, we will have to see.’

Lyra was grown up now, so she did not throw her arms around the witch who had taken such care of her from afar, but she took one hand off the alethiometer and squeezed Serafina’s wrist.

‘Thank you. I’ll be so grateful.’

‘Always, little sister.’

~~~

The public conveniences were round the back of the library, and Lee examined himself while Hester loitered outside. His grey moustache was bushy, his hair what he liked to consider handsomely ruffled. He suspected, although it pained him to admit it, that he looked a shade younger than he had done during that last trip, when he and Grumman had taken the balloon in search of Lyra and Will.

He didn’t pretend to understand what was happening, but he’d just proved his bodily functions were, well, functioning, and the finger that pressed against his cheek was solid. He was alive, and he wasn’t going to take that for granted.

In the library foyer he hesitated, staring through the glass. It had been a long time, and he was sure Viktoria wouldn’t remember him. But just in case, he would lie low, at least until he figured out what was to be done.

Outside, Hester slunk behind him to the dock where he’d agreed to meet Grumman. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t talking to him; it was as if she’d closed off from him completely. He no longer knew what she was thinking, not even to understand whether she was angry at him for leaving her for the world of the dead, or still feeling guilty about the Skraeling’s ring.

At the dock, Grumman was shaking hands with a young woman whose angular figure and severe hairstyle made Lee wish he’d stopped off at the library.

‘Captain Haugland, Mr Lee Schlesinger,’ Grumman said. ‘The captain and her ship, the Odin, will take us as far as Svalbard.’

‘Pleasure to meet you, Ms Haugland,’ Lee said, accepting the name he’d been given. ‘I'm very grateful for your assistance, I'm sure.’

‘It’s captain, if you please.’ Her voice was as clipped as her demeanour. ‘And I’ll be grateful for _your_ assistance.’ She reached into a compartment covered by an orange tarpaulin, and drew out a long, thin object.

Lee took it and felt its familiar weight. He caught Hester’s eye for an electrifying second before she looked away. Grumman’s expression, as usual, was unreadable, and Captain Haugland’s was guileless. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘I do have some experience with these.’

‘So your friend said,’ agreed Haugland, ‘and I’ll be grateful for your experience in providing security on our journey.’

‘You expecting trouble?’

‘There’s always trouble on the oil routes,’ she said shortly.

‘Well, ma’am, captain, you have my services as far as Svalbard.’

The captain nodded and stepped back. ‘Welcome aboard, gentlemen.’

~~~

The sleigh Lyra hired in Nova Zembla was comfortable and warm, although she missed the companionship of the Gyptians. Her witch escort touched down every night, and Serafina enlivened the evenings with tales of the witches’ histories and legends. Lyra was intrigued to hear of their prophecies, too; she’d known there was a prophecy about her, but had never thought beyond that. Now she learned of prophecies concerning other lands, even other worlds. She thought of asking Serafina whether there were any prophecies about Will, but stopped herself. That, she knew, would not be true to the promise they’d made each other, and which she’d worked so hard to keep for the past ten years.

‘We are being followed,’ Serafina said on their third evening out of Nova Zembla.

Lyra swallowed the last of her dried reindeer meat and sighed. ‘I suppose it’s to be expected. I hoped they’d all forgotten about me.’

‘My experience of the Church is that it does not forget,’ Serafina replied. ‘Particularly when those who have been its targets in the past begin distinguishing themselves in the field of political science.’

Lyra shrugged. ‘My dissertation was just something I was interested in. I don’t care about the Church. Why can’t they leave me alone?’

Serafina could give no answer that Lyra did not already know, so she kept quiet.

‘Anyway, I’m grown up now,’ Lyra said. ‘Me and Pan can look after ourselves.’

‘Do you understand any more about why we are travelling north?’ asked Serafina.

Lyra shook her head. ‘It keeps showing me a ring, but I can’t understand what it means. Unless it’s referring to Iorek’s armour.’ She clutched Serafina’s arm. ‘You don’t suppose something’s wrong with Iorek, do you?’

‘Kaisa visited him this morning,’ Serafina said. ‘All is well with Iorek Byrnison, and he is expecting you.’

Lyra breathed out. ‘But then why is the alethiometer sending us north, if it isn’t because Iorek needs our help?’

‘You know more about that than I, little sister.’

‘I don’t feel like I do any more.’ Lyra patted the bag in which she kept the alethiometer. ‘We’ll just have to trust it, I s’pose.’

~~~

Captain Haugland hadn’t exaggerated the risk of trouble on the journey to Svalbard. Three times Lee was called on to scare off pirates attempting to board the ship in the reaches of the night. The third time Lee was woken by Hester, and they headed off the attack before the crew were even aware of it.

As Lee settled back into his berth, he said, ‘Can’t we talk this through, Hester? You and me, we were always together, right through to the end.’ He remembered her soft fur against his cheek when she’d curled up close in the moments before they died.

But Hester said, ‘Ain’t nothing to talk about, Lee. Things are different now, that’s all.’ And they lay quietly for an hour or more, while the pink-streaked skies, which never fully darkened, turned golden with the morning.

~~~

‘Iorek!’ Lyra cried. With Serafina she might be grown up, but she ran towards the King of the Bears, hungry for his sturdiness and warmth. ‘Oh, Iorek, how are you?’

‘I am old, Lyra Silvertongue, and times are hard for my bears,’ Iorek rumbled. When he looked down at her, she saw how grizzled the fur around his eyes and jaw had become. ‘But it does my heart good to see you again.’

‘So do you need help?’ she said eagerly. ‘I wondered if that’s why…what can I do, Iorek?’

He lifted a massive arm and waved at the white wasteland behind her. ‘Will you stop them burning their fuels which warm the atmosphere and melt our ice? Will you stop them poisoning the fish we feed on?’

‘I’ll try,’ she said, but not as fiercely as she would once have done, because twenty-two-year-old Lyra had learned some things about the world. ‘I’ll try. Oh, Iorek, my dear, I didn’t realise things were so bad.’

‘Well, now you do.’ He dropped to all fours, his armour glinting in the milky sunlight. ‘And we have food waiting.’

‘Iorek,’ Lyra said as she followed him down the slushy track to his cave, ‘do bears have rings?’ She held out her left hand as she spoke, although it was unadorned by any jewellery.

Iorek growled a little. ‘We are not humans. We have no use for such fripperies and false gods.’

‘It’s funny you mention gods,’ said Lyra, ‘because where I come from it’s mainly the Church that uses rings, and badges and stuff, so people know who’s on whose side.’

‘As I said, false gods.’ They were passing the ruins of Iofur Raknisson’s castle, and Lyra shivered, remembering the terrifying hours she had spent there, lying for all she was worth.

‘They’re not so popular now as they used to be,’ she said.

‘I’m glad to hear it, for your sake,’ he said, ‘although it changes nothing here.’

~~~

There was no dock on Svalbard. Captain Haugland laid anchor in the natural harbour on the south side of the island, and rowed Lee and Grumman to the shore. They were wrapped in furs that Grumman had somehow obtained before they left Novy Odense, and the sun was out, but Hester’s ears still trembled with the cold. Once she would have crept into his arms for shelter, but no longer.

‘Tell me,’ Lee said, ‘you ever know a Miss Viktoria Lund?’

The captain’s head snapped up. ‘She’s my mother.’

‘That makes a lot of sense.’ Lee nodded. ‘You’re very like her.’ He thought back. ‘So she did marry that officer fellow…I should have realised when I heard your name. Seemed like a good man.’

‘He was.’ Haugland’s lips folded together. ‘He died when I was fifteen.’

‘I am very sorry indeed to hear that. And your mother?’

The strain left Haugland’s face. ‘She’s well. She runs the biggest mobile library in the north, as well as being in charge of everything in Novy Odense. They keep asking her to run for mayor, but she won’t do it. Says she likes getting things done, and mayors don’t do anything except eat and drink other people out of house and home.’

‘Well…’ Lee made a heroic effort; he must not give away his real identity, however much he longed to be remembered to Miss Viktoria Lund. ‘I'm very glad to hear news of her, I'm sure. I only knew her briefly, but she made a real good impression on me.’

‘I’ll mention your name to her, Mr Schlesinger.’

He nodded sadly. ‘You do that, Captain.’

With the snow shoes procured by Grumman, they made quick work of the soft snow near the water, although they were grateful when it firmed up inland. Grumman seemed to know where they were going, so Lee was content to follow, trusting in the shaman’s abilities.

‘You think Iorek’s going to be surprised to see us?’ he called to Hester when two bears appeared in the distance.

‘What kind of a dumb question is that?’ she demanded. Her fur, usually dirty-looking, was brightening up in the Arctic sunshine, and she was loping ahead with an ease that surprised him.

‘A dumb one,’ he said, chastened. ‘You’re right.’

Grumman stopped. He didn’t appear to have a map, and there were no roads to speak of on Svalbard, but when he pointed to the north west, Lee didn’t doubt him.

‘We have a mile or so to go,’ he said.

‘You any idea what we’re supposed to do when we get there?’ Lee asked.

Grumman shook his head. ‘I only know where we’re going.’

Lee shaded his eyes, staring out across the snow. The light nights were having a peculiar effect on him; he wasn’t sure how much he’d slept at all in the journey from Novy Odense. ‘That black speck over there. That look like bears to you?’

Grumman followed his gaze. ‘It’s people,’ he said after a long pause.’

Lee felt the comforting weight of the old Winchester rifle over his shoulder. Haugland had handed it to him without a word as he stepped off the Odin. 'Now what business do you think people other than us might have out here?’

Grumman shrugged. ‘As I said, I only know where I’m going.’

‘And what’s telling you that?’ asked Lee.

The shaman turned around slowly, shuffling from one foot to the other, his eyes on the horizon, unfocused. ‘I think,’ he said when he was facing Lee again, ‘I think it’s Dust.’

~~~

The fire embers glowed and faded, glowed and faded; the sky was an array of greys and ochres. The witches had left earlier that evening after conferring with Iorek, who was sleeping in his cave. Lyra hadn’t been able to settle, and when Pan had paced around her nest of furs for the tenth time in an hour, she had risen and brought the alethiometer outside.

She’d felt certain that once she was here she would know what to do next. The alethiometer was no help. It gave her the same answer each time, and she was starting to feel that impatient sensation it had often given her when she was a child, asking questions it had already answered.

‘I’m sorry,’ she told it. ‘I just wish I understood better.’

It showed her the same symbols: the balloon and the ring.

She stood up and stretched. She’d never been here in summer before, and couldn’t get used to the strange night time light. It wasn’t spectacular the way the Aurora were, but it had a specialness of its own.

Frowning, she stared into the gloom. Two shapes – no, three, because one had a daemon, and was that bird perhaps another daemon? Four shapes were heading towards her, and two of them were definitely human.

‘Pan,’ she said quietly, and he flowed up into her arms.

As they came closer she clutched the alethiometer, which she hadn’t yet stowed away. She’d heard of desert mirages, in which people saw something they longed for – usually water, but not always. Was it possible the snow was making her experience something similar?

The figures came closer, and she couldn’t deny what she was seeing any longer.

‘Mr Scoresby?’ Her voice came out as a croak, and she swallowed. It must be a night ghast; it must be.

But he stared at her, joy and love in his eyes, and when he opened his arms she ran to him with a cry.

Just as she reached him, something small and hard and impossibly fast whizzed past her hip.

~~~

‘Lyra, girl.’ Lee wrapped his arms around her a second before Hester’s warning reached him.

Over her shoulder, he saw two men crouched perhaps fifty yards away. Both of them held guns aimed straight at him.

Not at him. At Lyra.

He pulled her down to the snow and felt Pantalaimon wriggling free, heard him hissing. ‘Stay down, girl,’ he whispered, fierce in the sudden silence. And she did, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he brought the Winchester to his shoulder and let off two shots. They had no cover at all here; might as well be done with this quickly. But he aimed low; this soon into a new life, he was not eager to take another’s if it could be avoided. The two men fell, their cries evidence that he hadn’t killed them. Not yet, at least.

‘Lee.’ Hester’s voice was urgent. He followed her gaze and swore. Across the tundra, maybe another two hundred yards away, was a team of dogs pulling a sled, and standing up at the back of the sled were two more men, their guns pointing right this way.

‘Shelter,’ Lee said, and looked around for the shaman. He was a few paces behind, pulling at his furs, which were oozing pink at his shoulder. So the bullet that was meant for Lyra had found a home.

‘The cave,’ Pantalaimon gasped, and they followed his pine marten shape across the snow, past the dying fire and into the darkness.

~~~

‘Mr Scoresby,’ Lyra murmured between sobs as she lit the lantern. ‘Oh, Mr Scoresby, what’s happening? How can you be here?’

‘I don’t pretend to know that any better than you do,’ he said grimly, ‘although it sure is good to see you.’ His teeth flashed in the anbaric light, and with his smile she was twelve years old again, being swept from the research station to safety in his balloon. But he was already back at the entrance to the cave, aiming his gun at the intruders.

Lyra turned to the other man. ‘Mr Parry? It is Mr Parry, right? Oh, you’re hurt!’

‘Not badly,’ he said, although his voice was strained. He pulled away the last of the furs and rolled up his sleeve. ‘I need some snow.’

She scooped up a handful from the entrance. To her left, Mr Scoresby’s gun was trained on the team of dogs, or on the men balancing on the sled behind them. To her right, Hester crouched, ears twitching. Neither of them glanced at her, so she hurried back to Will’s father.

‘You are Mr Parry, aren’t you?’ she asked shyly as he applied the snow to the wound. ‘Will’s father?’

He stopped what he was doing. ‘Yes.’ They stared at one another in the flickering light.

‘I hope we get to talk properly about him,’ Lyra said eventually. Her eyes felt tight, but she refused to cry. ‘I think we can do that, you and I; I think it would be right. Will was such a good...oh, friend doesn’t come close to describing what he was to me! And you deserve to know about him, about that, Mr Parry.’

‘I’m glad you think so, Lyra.’ His voice was thick with everything he couldn’t say. ‘I hope we can sit down somewhere and talk about Will. I’d very much like that.’

The snow was melting on his bare arm and the blood was running again.

‘I know where Iorek keeps blood moss.’ Lyra flung herself towards the back of the cave, which functioned as a storage area for Iorek’s few possessions. She pulled out a pouch and thrust it at Mr Parry. ‘Here!’

Lee let off two shots, and then Hester cried out. Lyra hurried back to the entrance.

The muzzles of the dogs were visible now, and the jangling of the silver bells on their reins echoed across the snow. But the two men in the sled were beset by flying figures.

~~~

‘The witches!’ Lyra called. ‘I knew they wouldn’t have gone far.’

Lee held the Winchester straight until it was clear the witches had overwhelmed the assassins. Then he sagged against the wall of the cave.

‘I’m sorry to see you still don’t seem to be safe from this kind of trouble, Lyra,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ Lyra said carelessly, ‘it wasn’t anything, was it? Not when you were here! Mr Scoresby, _what are you doing here_?’

‘Like I said, Lyra, girl, I ain’t got any more clue than you.’ He touched her shoulder, suddenly shy. ‘And there’s you growing up while I’ve been gone.’

‘Yes, and oh, Lee, I’ve been researching, and I never knew you did so much, you and Hester, before we met!’

‘You’ve been researching me? Now what in the world made you do that?’

‘Not you, exactly, just the trading routes, but Lee, you came into so much of it.’

A figure broke away from the mêlée around the sled and walked towards them. She looked no older than when Lee had last seen her, but she still carried that air of infinite experience and grace.

‘Lee Scoresby,’ she said. ‘I am sorry I failed you when you needed me.’

‘Well, if I remember aright, we called you when it was too late anyhow,’ he said, ‘but I think I’d consider that debt paid in full now. Thank you, Serafina Pekkala.’

She bowed her head but kept her distance. ‘I do not know the magic that brought you here.’

‘I don’t rightly understand it either.’ He glanced back inside the cave, where Grumman was holding bloodmoss to his arm. ‘The Shaman here says it’s Dust.’

‘Perhaps,’ the witch replied. ‘There are more magics in the world than even we witches understand.’ Her gaze switched to Lyra. ‘Little sister, are you well?’

‘Very, Serafina,’ Lyra said, and Lee was proud of her.

‘Then we shall depart.’ She held up an arm and her daemon flew to perch there. ‘We will take these men with us. Lyra, if you need me when you leave this place, you have but to call.’

Lyra nodded and stepped forward into a bow. Lee followed suit, and by the time he raised his head again, the sky was full of witches.

~~~

Next morning, Lyra awoke to the sound of low voices. Pan slid lazily from under the furs, and she almost followed suit. Before she did so, she pulled out the alethiometer and thought her question.

‘I know,’ she said when the dials moved, ‘but surely that wasn’t it, was it? Or was it so’s Mr Scoresby – Lee – could save me? Or so I could talk to Mr Parry?’

The alethiometer had no further clues to offer, so she sighed and put it away.

By the fire, Lee was staring at a piece of metal, turning it this way and that.

‘I don’t know what to say, old comrade,’ he said to Iorek, catching Lyra in a quick smile.

‘There is nothing to say. The ring is yours. The breastplate is yours.’

‘Let me see!’ demanded Lyra.

Lee held out the metal. It was dull silver, and the centrepiece was a turquoise and silver ring.

‘My mother’s ring,’ he said. ‘It’s been on quite a journey.’

‘It has been sitting in my forge for a decade,’ Iorek corrected him, ‘but now I have found a use for it.’

‘Well, I’m very glad to see it,’ Lee said, fingering it. ‘Takes me right back, doesn't it, Hester? Hester?’

Lyra looked around. Hester and Pan were trotting across the snow towards them. She was used to her daemon roaming now, but she could see that Lee wasn’t.

When Hester got near enough, she leaned over the breastplate, inspecting it closely, and looked up at Lee. She glanced at Pan, who nodded.

With a leap, she landed in Lee’s lap, between his face and the breastplate. He laid down the breastplate and hugged her against himself, kissing the fur on her cheeks.

‘Ah, quit being sentimental, Lee,’ she said. But her voice trembled and her ears twitched, and she made no move to escape his embrace.

~~~

The days went quickly. Lee talked to Lyra; he talked to the Shaman; he talked to Iorek, and they all talked to each other, too. It was like a kind of political summit, he thought, only in his case he had no point of view except for catching up on the ten years he’d been dead and gone.

He and Hester were still careful with one another, but the bond between them was back. She refused to tell him where she’d been while he’d been in the world of the dead, or if she’d been anywhere at all. But whatever distance had been between them, it was gone now. She slept curled in the hollow of his arm at night, and by day she wandered with Pantalaimon.

At first he’d wondered if he would simply stop existing again; if he’d been brought back to save Lyra one last time. But the days passed and he and Hester were still here, not to mention the Shaman, whose wound healed quickly, and so he began, tentatively, to think of the future. Iorek’s breastplate, with Lee's mother’s ring, seemed to point the way. He’d been a mercenary once; why not again? Okay, he was getting on in years, but nobody made armour like a bear.

When he broached the subject, Lyra sat up straight. ‘Can we come with you?’ she asked. ‘Me and Pan, we’ve not travelled nearly enough since you – since the war. Oh Lee, I’m so _bored_ of being a scholar! Let us come with you?’

And who was he to deny her, the little girl who’d stolen his heart with her bravery and determination, now grown up into the kind of daughter he might have hoped for, if he’d been that kind of a man?

‘The ship we came in on,’ he said, looking at Grumman. ‘I seem to remember Captain Haugland said she’d be passing back this way in two weeks. You been keeping track of the days?’

‘The Odin will be back in three days,’ Grumman agreed, ‘and I shall be on it.’

‘Well now,’ Lee said, looking at Hester, ‘I don’t see why you and I shouldn’t be on it too, Lyra, if you’ve a mind to join us. My first stop will be Novy Odense again.’ He thought of that library foyer. ‘There’s a woman I intend to call on before any more time goes by.’

‘An old sweetheart?’ Lyra teased.

‘I don’t mind telling you, she’s someone who made a great impression on me a long time ago. It was too late for me then, and anyway, I was young and silly. I’m wondering if maybe now would be a better time.’

Lyra hugged Iorek before they left. ‘I’m going to do as you asked,’ she promised him. ‘I’m going to tell them all about the changes up here. I’ll make them change their ways.’

And if anyone could make the money-driven rulers of the human world see sense, Lee thought, it would be her.

~~~

It was another twenty years before Lyra made it to Texas. She travelled up from Houston in a gyropter, and when it dropped her a mile outside the small town mentioned in her notes, the sage rippled silver in the late evening sunshine. When Lyra pictured Texas she thought of industry, but she hadn't anticipated all these broad expanses of farmland. In fact, industry was what had brought her here; her research had led her to the oil trade, and the oil trade meant Texas, as well as the Arctic. But Lee had always spoken of farmland.

Shading her eyes, she surveyed the waving sage. It was easy to imagine Hester loping over that rise in the distance, ears at a rakish angle, Lee a few paces behind her. Clouds scudded across the wide sky, and the windows of the little farmhouse glinted in the sunlight.

Lyra smiled and closed her eyes. 'Hello, Mr Scoresby,' she whispered.


End file.
